The State of the Law Regarding Website Owner Liability for User Generated Content

摘要

Section 230 provides robust immunity to web hosts most reliably when it is clear that the content has been generated by a third party, independently of the host. While Section 230 can accommodate a certain degree of intervention in the creation of that content, future cases will continue to grapple with how much an ICS can do to it before the ICS takes on the role of the information content pro-vider and loses Section 230 protection, particularly in cases where the content in question is clearly illegal in some non-defamatory way.Meanwhile, Section 512 jurisprudence also continues to evolve. The Veoh cases and Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. currently provide relatively robust safe harbors for internet service providers. It remains to be seen whether they will continue to stand on appeal and if safe harbor protection will be equally avail-able for other sorts of internet service providers as well.